{"title":"Positional Preferences: Efficiency and Distortions Under Welfarist- and Paternalistic Governments","authors":"Sugata Ghosh, R. Wendner","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2939381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2939381","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the distortionary effects of positional preferences when labor supply is exogenous under both a welfarist and a paternalistic government. Extending the prior literature, reference levels may be partially exogenous to the government (e.g., determined by consumption choices in a foreign country), and individuals may be positional with respect to wealth in addition to consumption. Neither consumption- nor consumption-cum-wealth positionality needs to cause inter-temporal distortions under either welfare criterion. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for non-distortion of positional preferences. If those conditions are not satisfied, the same reference levels of consumption and wealth can give rise to under-saving or to over-saving -- depending on the extend to which the reference levels are exogenous to the government. Moreover, we provide conditions for which positional preferences for wealth and consumption imply over-consumption with respect to the welfarist criterion but, at the same time, over-saving with respect to the paternalistic criterion.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"318 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116001945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ERN: ConsumptionPub Date : 2017-02-13DOI: 10.4337/9781784716752.00038
K. Wertenbroch
{"title":"Consumer (Mis)Behavior and Public Policy Intervention","authors":"K. Wertenbroch","doi":"10.4337/9781784716752.00038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/9781784716752.00038","url":null,"abstract":"Consumers often “misbehave” (Thaler 2015). They save and exercise too little; they spend, eat, and drink too much and take on too much debt; they work too hard (or too little); they smoke, take drugs (but not their prescription medicine), have unprotected sex, and carelessly expose their private lives on social media. These misbehaviors may entail large costs not only to society but also to the individuals concerned. Hence, policy makers feel compelled to regulate these behaviors along with the extent, to which companies are allowed to cater to, or take advantage of, consumer preferences to engage in these behaviors. Yet, such policy interventions are often not based on the revealed preferences of those consumers who are mostly directly concerned by these interventions. Instead, they often follow expert assessments of consumer welfare or the objective to minimize negative externalities. I propose an alternative approach, building on Wertenbroch (1998), for how the theory-guided use of experimental methods, complemented by field data, to detect instances of consumer precommitment in the marketpace can provide both a criterion for evaluating the need for policy intervention — based on consumers’ own revealed preferences — and a tool for allowing consumers to avoid or limit their own misbehaviors without imposing heavy-handed, intrusive constraints on market participants’ freedom of choice (Thaler and Sunstein 2003).","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"143 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133387910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"가계부채가 소비와 경제성장에 미치는 영향 - 유량효과와 저량효과 분석 - (The Effects of Household Debt on Consumption and Economic Growth)","authors":"Jong Ku Kang","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2901797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2901797","url":null,"abstract":"Korean Abstract : 가계부채의 영향에 관해 가계부채 증가가 소비 촉진 등을 통해 경기 활성화에 기여한다는 시각과 높은 가계부채 수준은 소비와 경제성장에 부담을 주며 나아가 금융시스템의 취약성을 높인다는 시각의 두 가지 관점이 존재하고 있다. 이에 따라 가계부채의 영향에 관해 체계적으로 논의하고 이를 바탕으로 실증분석을 수행할 필요성이 있다고 하겠다. 본고는 가계부채가 증가하는 과정에서 발생하는 유량효과(flow effect)와 가계부채 누적에 따른 저량효과(stock effect) 측면에서 가계부채의 영향을 이론적으로 논의한 다음, 우리나라와 주요 선진국 자료를 활용하여 실증분석을 수행하였다.GMM을 통해 실증분석을 수행한 결과, 가계부채의 유량효과는 소비와 경제성장을 촉진하나, 저량효과는 이를 저해하는 것으로 나타났다. 유량효과와 저량효과별로 가계부채가 우리나라 소비와 경제성장 변동에 기여한 정도를 추정해 보면 2000년대 이후 긍정적인(양의) 유량효과 기여분이 줄어들고 있는 반면, 부정적인(음의) 저량효과 기여분은 확대되는 추세에 있다.한편, 긍정적 유량효과 계수 값은 글로벌 금융위기 이후 하락한 것으로 나타났으며, 이는 부동산구입 목적의 차입 증가 등으로 인해 순수소비 목적의 대출 비중이 줄어들면서 발생한 것으로 보인다. 부정적 저량효과 계수 값의 경우 글로벌 금융위기 이후 가계대출금리의 하락으로 기존 차주의 상환부담이 완화되면서 축소된 것으로 분석된다.유량효과와 저량효과를 종합하여 분석한 결과는 가계부채의 증가가 단기적으로 경기활성화에 도움을 주지만 가계부채 누적으로 인한 저량효과로 인해 경제성장에 부담을 줄 가능성이 높음을 시사한다. 이러한 점을 감안할 때 가계부채 증가세를 억제해 나가는 동시에 긍정적인 유량효과를 증대시키고 부정적인 저량효과를 완화하기 위한 방안을 모색할 필요가 있다.English Abstract : This paper discusses the effects of household debt in the aspects of ‘flow effect’ arising in the course of changes in household debt size and ‘stock effect’ occuring due to the level of household loans, and then, empirically analyzes the effects using the Korean time series data and the OECD panel data.The result of empirical estimation with GMM reveals that the flow effect of household debt facilitates consumption and economic growth while the stock effect hinders them. It is also found that the contribution of the flow effect on raising consumption and economic growth has decreased since 2000, however the contribution of the stock effect on impeding consumption and economic growth has expanded.The coefficients of flow effect and stock effect may change over time. Since the global financial crisis, the coefficient of flow effect has been scaled down, mainly because of the expansion of household mortgage loans that brought about a reduction in the share of household borrowing for consumption. The coefficient of stock effect has also decreased in size as the burden of household loan repayment was mitigated due to a fall in interest rates on household loans.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125967160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why is the Long-Run Tax on Capital Income Zero? Explaining the Chamley-Judd Result","authors":"B. Jacobs, A. Rusu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2903830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2903830","url":null,"abstract":"Why is it optimal not to tax capital income in the long-run in Chamley (1986) and Judd (1985)? This paper demonstrates that the answer follows standard intuitions from the commodity tax literature. In the steady state, Engel curves for consumption are linear in labour earnings, irrespective of the utility function adopted. Thus, in the steady state, consumption demands in each period become equally complementary to leisure over time. This renders taxes on capital income redundant, since they cannot alleviate distortions from taxing labour income. The argument that taxes on capital income should be zero because distortions explode in finite time is relevant only if restrictions are imposed on the utility function. We show how these restrictions imply that consumption demands in each period are equally complementary to leisure over time. We also demonstrate that the optimal tax on capital income is zero irrespective of whether the gross interest rate is endogenous. This contradicts arguments that the entire burden of capital income taxes is shifted to labour through general equilibrium effects on the interest rate.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"238 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116466753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ERN: ConsumptionPub Date : 2016-12-21DOI: 10.16980/JITC.12.6.201612.89
Ji-yeon Park, Y. Jeong
{"title":"The Moderating Effect of Consumer Dynamics and Prior Experience on Brand Extension Evaluation","authors":"Ji-yeon Park, Y. Jeong","doi":"10.16980/JITC.12.6.201612.89","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16980/JITC.12.6.201612.89","url":null,"abstract":"Most brand extension literature usually focus on consumers’ evaluations of brand extensions from the perspective of the parent brand or the extensions product characteristics, or the interaction of the parent brand and the extensions. However, little brand extension research, as well as even consumer behavior research attempts to find the critical determinants as characteristics on the newly emerging consumers’ behavior. Therefore, this research aims at examining on the distinctive consumers’ traits of today as a moderator in the brand extension evaluation. More specifically, we investigate whether consumer dynamics (CD), named on the basis of two concepts, that is, innovativeness and variety seeking, and prior experience (PE) may moderate the relation of the attitude toward the parent brand (PBA) and the attitudes toward the extensions (EBA). The results show that the impact of PBA on EBA is greater when CD and PE, respectively, is high than when CD and PE is relatively low. Moreover, the sign of the interaction is negative, indicating the decreasing effect of PBA in high CD and PE situation, respectively. The research findings suggest many implications for marketers and researchers. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134089525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Euler Equation: Estimation on Emerging Markets Data","authors":"I. Khvostova, A. Larin, A. Novak","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2883474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2883474","url":null,"abstract":"We address the issue of estimating the Euler equation for emerging markets. Using panel data for Russian households, we show that accounting for consumer type and income level is crucial. Consumers, who have neither savings nor loans, as well as consumers with low income, face liquidity constraints so that the Euler equation for them does not hold. The estimation for lenders suffers from weak identification so that confidence intervals for parameters are wide and any meaningful interpretation is difficult. For consumers with loans, we show that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) is significantly higher than zero. This result is robust to accounting for possible non-optimal behavior of consumers.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124764711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dual Effect of Money Priming","authors":"H. Kim","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2883050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2883050","url":null,"abstract":"Prior research on money priming has suggested two seemingly contradicting findings. On one hand, money has shown to highlight the importance of cost saving, leading to the choice of low quality-low price option. On the other hand, the individuals primed with money tended to focus on the personal goal and end outcome. In purchase decision, such tendency may raised subjective importance of the product quality. Current research proposes and demonstrates that whether money will enhances the weights of \"cost\" and \"quality\" depends on the nature of consumption context.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123684791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Savings Motives: With Special Reference to Households in Kalutara District","authors":"P. Kumarasinghe, S. Munasinghe","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2910297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2910297","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The household saving is a decision which is taken by the people to postpone their consumption of current income. Savings can be considered as one of the crucial tools which households utilized to accomplish their financial expectations in order to improve their financial wellbeing. There are many ways of accumulating or investing money, which can be identified as the deposits in bank accounts or building society accounts to saving in pensions, save in credit unions, invest in the stock market and many other saving sources. This study is an inspection of saving motives of Sri Lankan household in present economic situation. Briefly it can be explained, the harvest of the research will provid the answer to the question of what is the most significantly affected saving motive which stimulate/ encourage people to save money? And it will be further declared how do these saving motives vary when household characteristics differ? As a conclusion it can be stated that this study is seeking answers for why do people save money in a broader sense (Research Problem). And the answer for, of what is the most significantly affected saving motive to stimulate people, for savings? The main purpose of this paper is to examine the most significant savings motive among households in Kalutara District. Data were collected through questionnaires by using hundred respondents. The factor analysis is explored to examine, what is the most significant savings motive among pre-determined savings motives of bequest, precautionary and life cycle using SPSS 17. It has been identified the most significant savings motive of households in Kalutara district is the precautionary savings motive Keywords: Savings Behavior, Savings Motives, Factor Analysis","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133885208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Efficiency of Endowments","authors":"K. Rotthoff","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2867693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2867693","url":null,"abstract":"This study argues that endowments can be efficient, both for a finite-lived and infinitely-lived agent. When the lost utility from forgone consumption is less than the discounted utility brought by the cash flows paid throughout the endowment, endowments are utility enhancing. Given that this can be utility enhancing for a finite-lived person, it can also be utility enhancing for an infinitely-lived agent, such as a university. Given the recent political push to force well endowed universities to spend down their endowments, displaying how an endowment’s use can be an efficient is important for policy-makers.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125114737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Extreme Happiness: Some Explorations Using Taking Part Survey Data","authors":"S. Cameron","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2867560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2867560","url":null,"abstract":"A noted feature of single item ‘happiness’ measures is the tendency to produce figures at distances well above the mid-point of the scale. Most work, in economics, focuses on trying to ‘explain’ happiness as revealed in such scales and does not go on to look in detail at the distribution. The data used here is taken from the 2013-4 wave of the Taking Part survey which is conducted in the UK on an annual basis. The extremity and skewness of the happiness distribution on an 11-point scale is shown. Happiness is cross tabulated with a measure of anxiety to look for types of discordance in individual emotional expression that are neglected in standard statistical tests. It is suggested that discordancy measures may be used to explain other phenomena like narcissistic consumption.","PeriodicalId":431230,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Consumption","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133093591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}